Month: January 2014
The Same Places
Posted on January 29, 2014 in Bipolar Disorder Reflections
I’ve been thinking less about what it means to live with bipolar disorder and more about what it means to be human. But I have not yet stopped looking at what is wrong with me — damn those memories that strobe in my brain at the slightest trigger — and moved on to being the kind of person that I could be given the burnishing of my life history. I do things to fill the time. My steps on the trail resound with classical musical, my eye finds fresh subjects for the camera, but I end up in the same places, seeing the same things. And I haven’t dreamed in weeks.
Boadicea
Posted on January 12, 2014 in Cats
There in the half darkness sits a cat, the white fur of her neck mounded like a cravat, a tabby shield over her heart. A loud, uneven purr pours out of her nose. She waits for my service, first as waiter, then as warmer on the bed. This is my companion when the disturbances of the night interpose themselves between me and the equanimity that I covet. I am a bore, but she is a cat and requires no conversation.
A Cage for my Chaos
Posted on January 2, 2014 in Bipolar Disorder
People talk about being shocked by the diagnosis: The diagnosis did not throw me for a whirl — all the confusion stemmed from the sense of being different but not knowing how. When the hospital psychiatrist looked at me across the table and asked me if anyone had ever suggested to me that I was bipolar, I began constructing a cage for my chaos.
